march 2008

Before joining Elastic Path Software I worked with Image X Media, an awesome team of web designers and web developers at a little Drupal shop in Vancouver.

I'm really excited that they just launched a redesign of their site and a new web design and development blog for which I lent a helping hand to get started.

Tonight I threw up a little love letter to Image X Media over at my social media blog, highlighting some of the gorgeous social networks that Image X has recently developed and designed for clients. I was also involved in the design and usability planning of a handful of them, but I'll let you guess which ones.



Of Image X I have this to say:

I know first hand how honest, hard-working, funny, creative and talented the Image X team is. I can’t recommend them enough. And they’ve now got a full-time usability consultant on deck so you know your information architecture is going to be solid. They’re truly a full-service design firm.

Honesty and integrity is difficult to gage just from looking at a home page. But I worked with these folks for 18 months. These guys have it. I hope you consider Image X next time you need custom web design or programming with a solid and powerful CMS (Drupal).

And don't forget to subscribe to their blog :)

Here's installment 1 of "Begging for Links - The Series"

Hello,

I recently came across some pages on your interesting website, and I
noticed you linked to fashion related sites. I am responsible for linking
to interesting websites like yours, http://www.getelastic.com, from the
website
www.snippedURL.com.

I figured since you already link with a website that is somewhat similar
to SnippedURL.com, you wouldn’t mind if I linked to your site. Please
let me know if this is ok with you so that I can put up your link into
SnippedURL.com as soon as possible. If you have particular information
for your link, please do send me the details. Also, do you mind linking
back to SnippedURL.com? If you can, that would be very much appreciated
and I will gladly send you the information for our website. Thanks for
your time.

Sender

I checked out this ecommerce site and it's quite attractive and looks like a site I'd like to buy from, nevertheless, it's 2008 and this is pathetic link exchange sweet-talk that makes me lose respect for the company, even if the site owner is likely outsourcing to a clueless SEO.

Well, can't blame someone for trying, but my name is plastered all over our company blog, Hello Linda would have been a start. I didn't get the feel that this person had read anything on our blog, if they did they'd know that we don't just link off to fashion sites. There is no fashion category, and if I link to Couture Candy or Karmaloop it's because they are doing something super cool and our readers might want to look at their sites.

Nevertheless, I was in a good mood today.  This was my response:

Hi Sender

Thanks for your email. I'm not sure if you understand the nature of GetElastic, but I link to fashion sites only as part of our informative blog posts geared towards helping online retailers improve their marketing programs. I don't sell text links or participate in link exchange.

It's fine if you want to link to us, but we don't do link exchange. However, your site is very well done.

Here's how in the future you can earn a link from Get Elastic:

1. Do something unique in terms of usability, web 2.0, email marketing, social media marketing or mobile marketing.
2. Share information with us on a campaign that was a success or failure, something that would benefit the ecommerce marketing community.
3. Send that information to me and if it's blog-worthy content, we'll put it up there with a link to your site.

Otherwise we're not interested in link exchange.

Best,
Linda Bustos
Emerging Media Analyst
Elastic Path Software

I'm getting so many bad PR pitches and desperate PR requests that I've decided to post them here on my Gooruze blog (names and companies removed - I'm still a nice gal).

This is for your entertainment and maybe to commiserate. If you like the posts, perhaps we can get a group going - a pool of awful link exchange requests!